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The best VR experience yet
I just walked out of Valve’s SteamVR demo and can say that it is the best VR experience I’ve ever had. And this is coming from a guy who has tried nearly all of the VR headsets out there, including Oculus VR’s newest Crescent Bay prototype. This is the closest thing to a modern-day holodeck we have at the moment.
Built in partnership with HTC, and named the "Vive," the head-mounted display (HMD) here uses two 1080x1200 resolution displays, one for each eye. The display uses a low-persistence, global display solution that turns the display on and off at the same time.
We couldn't take any pictures of our VR experience but here's what the headset looks like.One Valve rep tells me the FOV is around 100 degrees, while another tells me its 110, I'm more inclined to believe the former. While I could still see pixels and there is of course, room for improvement, it’s hardly distracting and is definitely sharp enough for consumer release and dare I say, slightly sharper than Oculus’s Crescent Bay prototype.
Like the Oculus Rift HMD, the Vive will be a wired experience, and like Crescent Bay, it supports a 90Hz refresh rate. Beyond that however, there are are some key differences that set the two HMDs apart. Instead of relying on a single external camera for head tracking, Valve set up two “light towers” on two pillars and placed them on opposite ends of the room I was in (The room measured roughly 25 foot by 25 foot). The light towers simply need to be powered (they don’t need to be plugged into your PC) and they emit some red lasers that assist the Vive in mapping out your room so you can get 360 degree room scale tracking, which allows you to map out your walkable space when you're in VR. The light towers also help to identify where Valve’s new VR controllers are. The controllers are very similar to the Razer Hydra controllers, except will be wireless (the prototype unit we tested used a wired solution, but hear there are working wireless ones out there in the wild). The controllers have sensors that work in conjunction with the light towers to allow the HMD to detect where they are in your virtual reality experience. Assuming you are holding these sticks, this essentially means you can see your hands in the game. The controllers have circular touchpad on the front that are roughly one inch in diameter, a trigger button on the back that essentially allows you to grab things (ala crab hands), and long buttons on the side of the stick that you can squeeze (think stress ball). The controls were nearly 1:1 and are definitely the best VR controllers out there, even better than Sixense’s similar Stem VR system. There are also a bunch of little cameras on the front of the headset that leverage the position of the light towers to provide positional tracking, which not only lets you lean into objects but to walk around as well. One big problem with VR pertains to response time and I tried shaking my head as fast as I could to see if I could experience any judder, I am glad to report back that I experienced no such lag. It felt completely smooth and natural.
This is more or less how our VR room was set up.While the headset that I used did not have integrated audio, Valve told me that the consumer version will come with an integrated solution that users will be able to detach, if they desired to user their own high-end audio headset.
Now, on to the real fun part: the demos! I tried roughly half a dozen demos during my session with Valve. The first of which placed me into a white room with a bunch of virtual posters of the demos I was about to experience. What was immediately pretty weird was that I saw the controllers in VR floating my way. It was the Valve rep handing the controllers to me. As soon as I held both controllers in my hand, I immediately felt at home. I quickly came to the realization that the pinpoint precision and accuracy of being able to move my hands on a 1:1 basis was the big piece of the VR puzzle that I had been missing this whole time. I began this demo by using my left hand to press down on the "play" button in front of me. After I did that, I started to see a bunch of little white pillars appearing all around me. these pillars would shift up and down and there were hundreds of them surrounding me. While it’s a very simple demo, it just felt extremely polished and certainly gave me a sense of presence.
The next demo was called Blue and it took me to the bottom of the ocean atop an old sunken ship. The point of this demo is to show off three-dimensional depth. I should mention that I am nearsighted and wear glasses and prior to starting this demo was prepared to take them off, but was advised that the HMD “renders to infinity” (I assume this means it renders as far as the human eye can see) and that I could and should leave them on as a result. With my prescription glasses on underneath the HMD, I looked straight up and it seemed like I was half a mile away from the surface. Faintly in the distance above I could see the sun’s rays piercing the top of the ocean. I really felt submerged (and this is coming from a licensed Scuba diver). Another element that was interesting about this demo is that barriers of my real physical space were taken into account within the game. Essentially the walkable area on the deck of the ship represented the walkable area of space within the room. Valve says these experiences will dynamically shift depending on one’s real space constraints, though our rep didn’t elaborate on how as of yet. Considering all the VR experience I’ve tried so far have been designed for the seated experience, I still couldn't help but not trust these markers. Valve says some games will draw boundary lines on the ground or even render virtual walls once you get close to the bounds of the walkable area. Even with these walls in place, however, I just felt safer taking the small step here and there. In this demo, I saw a bunch of fish and manta rays swim around me and it just felt extremely polished and immersive. This is much better than the Ocean Rift demo on the DK2. But the real kicker came when a giant blue whale swam by the ship and looked at me. I felt like I was on an alien planet and basically kept on smiling and nodding my head as if to suggest to myself, “Yep, you guys have done it.”
The next demo took me to a virtual kitchen and presented me with some ingredients on a virtual counter top and placed instructions on a wall to a recipe. It asked me to pick up tomatoes on the table in front of me and then walk over to the right to place them in a pot. I then had to find a mushroom, but didn’t see it on the table so I had to walk over to the fridge on my left to open it up. The missing mushrooms was in there, so I picked it up and walked across the kitchen to place it in the pot. From there, I dinged the bell sitting atop a table to signal that dinner was ready. It was a cartoony demo in the style of Surgeon Simulator and the graphics weren’t very intensive, but it just felt like a complete joy. Ringing the bell, picking up the various objects, opening the fridge...it all just felt so incredibly natural and instinctive. It didn't feel like I was experiencing a demo, but instead accomplishing real work.
The next experience was called Tilt Brush. It leveraged the full range of motion that Valve’s VR controller provided and allowed me to use my hands to paint floating 3D art in the air. The way it works is that your right hand presents options for you to change your brush type and brush color. You then can use your left hand to point and select what sort of brush you want. You’re not only relegated to paint, but can paint with fire, stars, ice particles and more. So there I was, painting fiery three-dimensional Christmas trees. From here I could walk around my floating artwork and admire it from all angles. I suggested that Valve should allow users to 3D print their works of art, similar to what Microsoft is doing with its HoloLens and HoloStudio software suite.
The next demo I tried was called The Gallery: Six Elements, which is a full fledged game being designed by Canadian developer CloudHead Games (look forward to an in depth video interview with them shortly). This demo started me off in an ancient fantasy-style elevator in some dark mines, think the Mines of Moria from the Lord of the Rings. I could walk around this elevator and pick up Skyrim-like helmets and nuts and bolts. And off in the distance was a big giant rock monster, like something you’d see out of God of War. The rock monster talked and seemed friendly enough. Me? I was mainly focused on pulling levers, using my hands to swat at dangling cables and picking up little bolts throughout the room and inspecting them with a childlike wonderment. The rock monster continued rambling on and so I decided to see if I could chuck a bolt at him, and it worked! Throwing objects felt extremely natural. Eventually the elevator started falling apart, and walls started falling down all around me. The elevator eventually took me to the top where I could see this expansive fantasy like vista with a bridge in front of me. The rock monster asked me to follow him, and that’s where the demo ended. I wanted more of it, and suffice it to say, I'm eagerly awaiting the game's release.
Compared to other VR solutions, Valve is at the top of the heap. Its headset is sharp, offers a great sense of depth, has excellent tracking, allows you to walk around, didn't make me motion sick, and comes with an excellent VR controller that works well. In addition, all of the demos looked excellent and polished. Valve says a dev kit should be released by the summer and the consumer release should be coming at the end of the year. If I do have one concern about Valve/HTC's solution, however, it pertains to price. All of this sounds expensive, but I would arguably sell my own legs for this if it meant I could get virtual ones.
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I just walked out of Valve’s SteamVR demo and can say that it is the best VR experience I’ve ever had. And this is coming from a guy who has tried nearly all of the VR headsets out there, including Oculus VR’s newest Crescent Bay prototype. This is the closest thing to a modern-day holodeck we have at the moment.
Built in partnership with HTC, and named the "Vive," the head-mounted display (HMD) here uses two 1080x1200 resolution displays, one for each eye. The display uses a low-persistence, global display solution that turns the display on and off at the same time.
We couldn't take any pictures of our VR experience but here's what the headset looks like.Like the Oculus Rift HMD, the Vive will be a wired experience, and like Crescent Bay, it supports a 90Hz refresh rate. Beyond that however, there are are some key differences that set the two HMDs apart. Instead of relying on a single external camera for head tracking, Valve set up two “light towers” on two pillars and placed them on opposite ends of the room I was in (The room measured roughly 25 foot by 25 foot). The light towers simply need to be powered (they don’t need to be plugged into your PC) and they emit some red lasers that assist the Vive in mapping out your room so you can get 360 degree room scale tracking, which allows you to map out your walkable space when you're in VR. The light towers also help to identify where Valve’s new VR controllers are. The controllers are very similar to the Razer Hydra controllers, except will be wireless (the prototype unit we tested used a wired solution, but hear there are working wireless ones out there in the wild). The controllers have sensors that work in conjunction with the light towers to allow the HMD to detect where they are in your virtual reality experience. Assuming you are holding these sticks, this essentially means you can see your hands in the game. The controllers have circular touchpad on the front that are roughly one inch in diameter, a trigger button on the back that essentially allows you to grab things (ala crab hands), and long buttons on the side of the stick that you can squeeze (think stress ball). The controls were nearly 1:1 and are definitely the best VR controllers out there, even better than Sixense’s similar Stem VR system. There are also a bunch of little cameras on the front of the headset that leverage the position of the light towers to provide positional tracking, which not only lets you lean into objects but to walk around as well. One big problem with VR pertains to response time and I tried shaking my head as fast as I could to see if I could experience any judder, I am glad to report back that I experienced no such lag. It felt completely smooth and natural.
This is more or less how our VR room was set up.Now, on to the real fun part: the demos! I tried roughly half a dozen demos during my session with Valve. The first of which placed me into a white room with a bunch of virtual posters of the demos I was about to experience. What was immediately pretty weird was that I saw the controllers in VR floating my way. It was the Valve rep handing the controllers to me. As soon as I held both controllers in my hand, I immediately felt at home. I quickly came to the realization that the pinpoint precision and accuracy of being able to move my hands on a 1:1 basis was the big piece of the VR puzzle that I had been missing this whole time. I began this demo by using my left hand to press down on the "play" button in front of me. After I did that, I started to see a bunch of little white pillars appearing all around me. these pillars would shift up and down and there were hundreds of them surrounding me. While it’s a very simple demo, it just felt extremely polished and certainly gave me a sense of presence.
The next demo was called Blue and it took me to the bottom of the ocean atop an old sunken ship. The point of this demo is to show off three-dimensional depth. I should mention that I am nearsighted and wear glasses and prior to starting this demo was prepared to take them off, but was advised that the HMD “renders to infinity” (I assume this means it renders as far as the human eye can see) and that I could and should leave them on as a result. With my prescription glasses on underneath the HMD, I looked straight up and it seemed like I was half a mile away from the surface. Faintly in the distance above I could see the sun’s rays piercing the top of the ocean. I really felt submerged (and this is coming from a licensed Scuba diver). Another element that was interesting about this demo is that barriers of my real physical space were taken into account within the game. Essentially the walkable area on the deck of the ship represented the walkable area of space within the room. Valve says these experiences will dynamically shift depending on one’s real space constraints, though our rep didn’t elaborate on how as of yet. Considering all the VR experience I’ve tried so far have been designed for the seated experience, I still couldn't help but not trust these markers. Valve says some games will draw boundary lines on the ground or even render virtual walls once you get close to the bounds of the walkable area. Even with these walls in place, however, I just felt safer taking the small step here and there. In this demo, I saw a bunch of fish and manta rays swim around me and it just felt extremely polished and immersive. This is much better than the Ocean Rift demo on the DK2. But the real kicker came when a giant blue whale swam by the ship and looked at me. I felt like I was on an alien planet and basically kept on smiling and nodding my head as if to suggest to myself, “Yep, you guys have done it.”
The next demo took me to a virtual kitchen and presented me with some ingredients on a virtual counter top and placed instructions on a wall to a recipe. It asked me to pick up tomatoes on the table in front of me and then walk over to the right to place them in a pot. I then had to find a mushroom, but didn’t see it on the table so I had to walk over to the fridge on my left to open it up. The missing mushrooms was in there, so I picked it up and walked across the kitchen to place it in the pot. From there, I dinged the bell sitting atop a table to signal that dinner was ready. It was a cartoony demo in the style of Surgeon Simulator and the graphics weren’t very intensive, but it just felt like a complete joy. Ringing the bell, picking up the various objects, opening the fridge...it all just felt so incredibly natural and instinctive. It didn't feel like I was experiencing a demo, but instead accomplishing real work.
The next experience was called Tilt Brush. It leveraged the full range of motion that Valve’s VR controller provided and allowed me to use my hands to paint floating 3D art in the air. The way it works is that your right hand presents options for you to change your brush type and brush color. You then can use your left hand to point and select what sort of brush you want. You’re not only relegated to paint, but can paint with fire, stars, ice particles and more. So there I was, painting fiery three-dimensional Christmas trees. From here I could walk around my floating artwork and admire it from all angles. I suggested that Valve should allow users to 3D print their works of art, similar to what Microsoft is doing with its HoloLens and HoloStudio software suite.
The next demo I tried was called The Gallery: Six Elements, which is a full fledged game being designed by Canadian developer CloudHead Games (look forward to an in depth video interview with them shortly). This demo started me off in an ancient fantasy-style elevator in some dark mines, think the Mines of Moria from the Lord of the Rings. I could walk around this elevator and pick up Skyrim-like helmets and nuts and bolts. And off in the distance was a big giant rock monster, like something you’d see out of God of War. The rock monster talked and seemed friendly enough. Me? I was mainly focused on pulling levers, using my hands to swat at dangling cables and picking up little bolts throughout the room and inspecting them with a childlike wonderment. The rock monster continued rambling on and so I decided to see if I could chuck a bolt at him, and it worked! Throwing objects felt extremely natural. Eventually the elevator started falling apart, and walls started falling down all around me. The elevator eventually took me to the top where I could see this expansive fantasy like vista with a bridge in front of me. The rock monster asked me to follow him, and that’s where the demo ended. I wanted more of it, and suffice it to say, I'm eagerly awaiting the game's release.
Here's a short video snippet of Valve's Portal VR demo.
The last demo was a pleasant surprise and was developed by Valve itself. It took me to a laboratory within Aperture Labs and I was greeted with narration from the opening narrator from the original Portal. The narrator asked me to perform various tasks in the lab which included opening drawers along a wall. I encountered a bug, however, where I couldn’t pull out one of the drawers and this particular demo had to be reset (a downside to showing pre release hardware, I’m afraid.) Once the demo booted up again, I was able to pull the drawers out. One of the drawers contained a piece of rotted cake (the cake is real and I have seen it!) . Another drawer contained a bunch of little cartoon stick figures working inside a tiny office. The narrator said because I looked at them, I became their god. The drawer then closed and the narrator jokingly suggested that the tiny little community inside would be incinerated. It wouldn’t be Portal without a little Valve humor. Eventually the narrator asked me to walk to the other end of the lab and hold down a latch. Doing so opened up a garage-like door and out came Atlas, one of the robots from Portal 2. He came stumbling out and looked real sick. the narrator asked me to pull his face off and out popped his robotic guts in front of me. The narrator said I needed to fix the robot and quickly jabbered a bunch of nonsensical technical instructions and gave me a quick destruction timer. Eventually Atlas pulls himself together and the walls started collapsing, revealing more of the underbelly of Aperture Labs. Atlas then falls out of the room and after he falls, none other than a giant Glados comes rolling around. She starts spouting off about me as she looks at me, and the demo ends. Compared to other VR solutions, Valve is at the top of the heap. Its headset is sharp, offers a great sense of depth, has excellent tracking, allows you to walk around, didn't make me motion sick, and comes with an excellent VR controller that works well. In addition, all of the demos looked excellent and polished. Valve says a dev kit should be released by the summer and the consumer release should be coming at the end of the year. If I do have one concern about Valve/HTC's solution, however, it pertains to price. All of this sounds expensive, but I would arguably sell my own legs for this if it meant I could get virtual ones.
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